Ways to Optimize Website in the New World of Google Hummingbird

By now you must have probably heard the news that the big daddy of search engines, Google has churned out a new algorithm update, known as the Hummingbird. It is Google’s latest baby or whole new algorithm, following Penguin and Panda. While the Panda, affected the websites that contained low quality or duplicate content, however, this time ‘CONTENT’ is the main focus here. The main aim of Hummingbird is to provide quality and relevant content that offers more depth to the users rather than just search terms. It is merely an effort to provide effective and faster internet experience to the users.

So, what exactly is Google’s Hummingbird Algorithm Update?

Hummingbird is essentially an all new search algorithm update rolled out by Google to provide precise and faster search results and places a lot of importance on the semantic search. Semantic search is basically an attempt to understand the objective or aim of the user’s search, rather than just concentrating on the individual keywords that he generally uses. In simpler words, it focuses on the ‘NEEDS’ of the users rather than just answering a string of keywords. The main intention here is to make the search engine easily understand and interpret the complex or long search queries and help get the precise results in a hassle-free manner.

For example, a user searches for the ‘healthy cat food near my house’. The old method or better say algorithm would have returned the results including a Wikipedia page for ‘Healthy Cat Food’ at the top of the web page as well as with the terms ‘my house’ included within. Now, the new update, takes into  consideration ‘my house’ as  ‘where one lives’ and returns the local results. It is crystal-clear that the Hummingbird update makes the Google more user-friendly by matching the results with all the search terms and not just the individual keywords.

How to Optimize Website Content Post Hummingbird?

Content will always remain the King and this is what Google is emphasizing on. If you are still wondering about how to maintain the traffic and page rank of your website in a post-Hummingbird world, then the following prominent tips will certainly help you a lot:

Mould your Content into the Question and Answer Pattern

People are constantly looking for the answers online and after the update, if you can devote your attention towards incorporating a question-answers (Q&A) like pattern in your content, then it will certainly do great wonders to your content. ‘How to’, ‘What is’, etc. posts are the evergreen content that will never fade out. Just think for a minute, how often you search for the information on the internet using these terms – probably eight out of ten times. So, if you can mould your content according to the Q&A approach, then you can certainly push your traffic up.

Consider the Needs of the Customers

It is really imperative more than ever to consider the needs of the customers. If the content about your product or services is providing a perfect solution to the customers, then this will definitely go a long way in steering your content. For example, if your website is all about a particular travel destination, then it must contain the important details such as the best places to see, climate, languages spoken, ideal time to travel and so on. Make an effort to provide as much in-depth information as possible.

Do Not Forget about Mobile

The search engine giant is devoting its attention to the fact that a large number of people are now using the mobile devices to access the internet and conduct a search. Most of the smartphones facilitate a conversational search with Google through VOICE. Quite simply, it cannot be ignored that the users more or less speak differently than what  they type.

So, for doing some research through the phones using the speech, for instance, the voice directions will be much longer. For this very reason, one can basically say that the usage of the keywords has certainly become redundant and the Google is now shifting away its focus from the keywords to deliver quality results for the long search queries.

Take into the Account your Sales Goals

It is pivotal to remember that an excellent content marketing strategy will yield rich dividends, if it succeeds in complimenting your sales efforts. This clearly means that after the Hummingbird update, one must make sure that his website content is relevant according to the services or products offered to the customers.

Use an Effective Mix of the Social Media Channels

One very important thing this particular update makes clear is that it uses the social signals to rank the content on the search engine. So, it is vital that you enhance your presence on the social media and use various websites such as Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus to spread your content and actively develop a community. This way, you will be able to build an authority and trust.

The Final Words

There is nothing much to fear about the Google’s Hummingbird update. It is essentially meant for penalizing those sites that are not following the search engine giant’s rules. Its only objective is to make the search results relevant and quicker to the users. In order to stay in the competitive online world, you should optimize your website, work on your content and provide better experience to the users. So, welcome the Hummingbird with Open Arms, create quality content and outperform your competitors.